by Ed Tyler
This piece was originally published in Cascadia Spoke, a community publication dedicated to raising awareness of the Cascadia movement and bioregionalism.
Bioregioning: from verb “to bioregion”; act of bringing your bioregion into existence through grounding, connecting, celebrating, belonging & remember: bioregioning is an invitation, not a doctrine.
To begin: ground yourself in the here and now. You already live in a bioregion. Bioregioning (verb) is the act of manifesting it. Explore the land around you. Wander, discover, get lost, awaken to what is around you. Use your feet to do it; it’s what they are for; it’s what you are for. Garden: as well as crops, collect seeds from plants that happily grow around you and introduce them into the spaces that you tend. Intend, tend what is around.
You have set off on what is to become your own personal saga of local connections. You start to reach out to all the life that is around you. Meet the animals and insects that share your bioregion with you. Make friends with your neighbours and start working on joint projects, projects that give you a sense of satisfaction and conviviality. Spend less time driving and sitting in front of a computer screen in search of worthwhile connections.
The connections grow, helping create more connections. Like the plants around you, you begin to grow. Time to celebrate all the abundance! Make up your own rituals. We are all shamans-in-waiting.
As we get more grounded, as we spin our web of local connections, as we celebrate the abundant treasures of our land-and-sea scapes, we come home. We belong once more. We have found the antidote to alienation.
Bioreginoning involves:
- slowing down, looking and feeling inward and outward to the land, water, creatures, and people around you
- making music, clothes, buildings, sculptures, relationships, furniture, poems, paintings and other necessities from locally available materials
- cycling and sharing resources, money and energy within your region
- growing and eating locally sourced, seasonally abundant food
- networking and collaborating with one another to build diverse communities and ecologies
Permaculturalist Ed Tyler writes from Kintyre, Scotland. Read more at bioregioning.com.
